At The End of the Line
by detective-sweetheart
Summary: Stay with me, she says, and he nods, before replying. You know I will.


**A/N: Yes, this is a one-shot. No, CI is not mine. Once again, my muse has gotten carried away, and I know it's long. But I watched Amends last night and this kind of begged to be written, and would have been up a while ago if I wasn't picky. In any case...that is all. **

* * *

She cries, when she gets home that night.

The thing about cases from years ago is that though they have been closed, evidence then isn't as reliable as it is now. She has spent the past nine years thinking that the so-called man who murdered her husband was behind bars. But once again, life has thrown a wrench into things. And leave it to the department not to notice.

Alex has been many things, but right now, she wants to be nothing.

She wanders through the place because she can and because it's hers. She thought at one point last year that she wanted to move, but she decided against it. There are too many memories in this place and too many things that she has tried not to think about. But now she does, because of this case that she and her partner have just closed. And she wanders through the place in the dark, because on those off days, that was what they did, if only to amuse themselves.

They bought the place in '95, after they got married. But now the mortgage payments are hers alone and she doesn't care.

There is a picture on the wall, one that she keeps up because sometimes she is afraid that she will forget what he looked like. She stands in the middle of a dark hallway, just staring, not bothering to wipe away her tears, because there is no one there to see them. No one there to judge her. Alex thinks for a moment on Theresa Quinn's stricken face upon hearing of the death of her husband, and wants to swear. Damn the city, she thinks, damn them and their problems, and gangs, and drugs, and bloodlust…Damn the department and whatever makes it irresistible enough that people don't care if they die in the lines of duty.

She takes the picture off the wall and holds it to her chest, closing her eyes and rocking back and forth on her heels.

The St. Patrick's Day parade of 1995 came two weeks after they had been married on the third of that March. It was one of the city's bigger events. They'd both gone. And Theresa Quinn had been there with her now-late husband, too. Kevin had been playing the pipes, she'd said, also mentioning that it was something he only ever really did at the funerals. The parade gave him another reason. Someone had played at Kevin's funeral, but she hadn't seen who it was.

She was too busy trying to hold herself together.

If there is one thing that Alex has always hated, it is the looks of pity that sometimes come directed towards a cop's widow. Once upon a time, the looks were for her. She knows that they are for Theresa now, and tried to keep from doing it, but it wasn't easy. She slides to the floor, with the picture still at her chest and closes her eyes, a shuddering breath escaping her as she does. It has been too long, she muses, too long a time where she has not thought of it, in which she has tried to come to terms with it, only to shove it to the back of her mind, determined to make it on her own.

And suddenly, it is 1998, and she is in that damnable Vice gear on the streets, and there's a panicked voice in the wire that she wears. Come back in, Kaye Spurlock had told her. Something happened. Narcotics is looking for you.

It's funny, Alex thinks now, that at the time, she had been so damn convinced that Kaye was just yanking her chain. But she hadn't been. And then everything was a blur, and there were voices, and faces she hardly recognized, because she was in shock and this couldn't be happening, not to them. But it had been. And he was there, but not really conscious and she knew he couldn't see her because his eyes were closed, but she stayed anyways, and she is the one holding his hand when he fades away.

The tears come back, then, hot and bitter, and angry. What right does anyone have, she wonders, to just pull a trigger, and take someone's life, and someone else's heart? She hasn't cried like this since that night in the hospital nine years ago, when she had been forced to let him go, because there wasn't anything more that anyone could do. But the wounds that she sustained that night, though not physical, have never truly healed, and she wonders if they ever will. She has heard that time heals everything, and is convinced that it is a lie, because nine years have not healed a damn thing.

Alex reaches up, finally, to wipe at the tears that linger on her face, before staring down at the picture, focusing on the one face that still means the world to her, even now. He had been her first real love, more so than all the high school boyfriends, because he'd been the one to really understand her and take her the way she was, not them. And she'd fallen, hard, and on that day in '95 when she'd looked at him and said 'I do', she'd been convinced that they'd stick together, forever, as childish as it had seemed. But it had felt that way.

And she had conveniently forgotten that forever concerning a cop has no defined meaning. One second, one minute, one hour, one day…three years.

She doesn't want to be alone, but at the same time, she does. She knows that at some point, she should probably apologize to Bobby for not trusting him, but she'd been so determined to make him leave it alone, not wanting to do it all over again, that she hadn't cared. Her cell phone is in her pocket and it's been buzzing all night, but she hasn't talked to anyone. And she knows that at some point, someone is going to call Bobby and ask if she's all right, but he won't know, because she hasn't said anything, and it'll freak him out, because he's already dealing with his own issues. In short, it means that sooner or later, it'll all end up getting back to one Jimmy Deakins, because she isn't going to discuss it with Ross, and Bobby knows it.

He knows a lot, Alex thinks, wryly, and damn the Chief of D's, anyway. My partner's not a whack job.

Things are coming slowly into perspective, somehow. Her breathing is still a bit shaky and she knows that her face has been marked by the tears, but she still doesn't care. Let them see me, she thinks. What are they going to do about it? The bravado in her thoughts is more than she actually feels. In fact, she doesn't know what she feels. But right now, she is on leave and so it doesn't really matter, but at the same time, it does.

She wants to go back to that night in 1998 and warn him not to go on that buy, wants to go back and tell Deakins, who was playing commander of that squad back then that if he sends them out, one of them will not return. But she can't, and she knows it, and it kills her because she wasn't supposed to have been out that night, but Tori Adams had called in sick, and she'd volunteered. She remembers the discussion that came, between the two of them, and how he'd promised to come find her, when he was finished. But it had been Kaye, and then Kevin, and then after the blur, the department.

And they are there now, in her face and on her mind, because they have been for so long already that if they weren't, it would feel strange. It has become her livelihood, her reason for living, and at this moment, all she has to hold onto. He is the reason why she stayed, and she knows it. The department is one of the few links she still has to him. One of the many things they had in common, and the only thing that held their attention, other than each other.

Life is unexpected, though, and the difference between what Alex wants and what she gets is obvious, and coldly so. She looks down at the picture once again and runs a gentle hand over the glass, wishing that she could feel right now what she had felt back then. But it won't happen. She sucks in a breath and exhales it slowly, willing herself to regain whatever composure she still has left, and then she hears it. Someone knocking on the door. She carries the picture with her, reluctant to let it go, and goes to answer.

On the other side is Bobby, looking more than a little bit uncertain, and more than a little bit concerned.

"You weren't answering your phone," he says, plainly, and she bites back the retort she feels coming in the back of her mind.

"I know," she says, instead. "I didn't want to talk to anyone."

"Oh."

But he doesn't move, and she knows he's not going to leave anytime soon, because that's just how he is, and why she was mad at him in the first place, because he hadn't wanted to let go, even after she'd told him to.

She gives an exasperated sigh, more because she wants to make him believe that she's really all right than anything else.

"Oh, just come in already, Bobby, honestly…" she says, and forgets that she's holding the picture until she notices him giving her a sideways look and looks back at him.

"What is that?" he asks, slowly, unsure of whether or not she's going to answer, and suddenly, she really doesn't feel like talking to him, and so she wanders into the kitchen, leaving the lights off, and noticing that he leaves them off behind him annoys her, so she turns to glare at him.

"Flip the lights on," she says, more of an order than anything else, but he knows better than to argue with her right now, and so he does. Light floods the kitchen, and Alex blinks before speaking again. "What do you want?"

"To apologize."

The words startle her. She hadn't expected him to come around at all, honestly, because he'd been so damn convinced that he'd been right about everything, and then again, so had she. And she had almost broken down in front of him, and had stopped at the last minute, knowing that it wasn't going to do her any good then, and it wouldn't now.

"For what?"

If her questions are coming out bluntly, she doesn't care, and he doesn't say anything for a long moment, just looking at her, before finally looking away, upon realizing that she's not going to blink.

Somewhere along the lines, she got good at that, but she doesn't know when.

"For pushing this, after…I was wrong. Is that what you want to hear? I shouldn't have pushed it."

Suddenly she doesn't want to hear it. "Don't you apologize to me," she says, wondering why she sounds annoyed even though what she feels is tired. Bobby stares at her.

"Why?"

Alex wants to laugh at this, because it's just the sort of thing he'd ask. He knows he's upset her, which is the real reason why he's apologizing, but at the same time, it's not, somehow, and she gets the feeling that both of them know it.

"Because if you hadn't, we wouldn't have found him," she tells him, finally, unconsciously hugging the picture closer to her. "I'd have never known what really happened."

"You aren't…upset with me?"

"No."

It isn't a lie. She really isn't. Before, she had been, because all eyes had been on her, because it had been Kevin and everyone knew the connection between her and him and Joe: it was impossible for them not to. They had been watching, closely, to the point where Ross had been about to pull her off the case, and she considers it somewhat of a miracle that she managed to talk him out of it. They'd have only fallen behind if she'd been made to relinquish her place to someone else, and she'd have been damned before she let it happen.

"I really shouldn't have gone looking…" says Bobby, his voice breaking into her thoughts, and she shakes her head at him.

"Don't worry about it," she says. "We got who we were looking for…on both counts."

She wonders why it hurts to know this and decides that maybe it's because she's thought all along that the one they nailed for Joe's murder in the first place was the one who actually did it, and now that it's turned out that he wasn't, everything seems wrong. She wonders when it will all seem right side up again, and decides that she'll figure it out later, because right now, what she wants is maybe a cup of coffee and to go to sleep, though technically, one negates the other.

A rustling sound catches her attention, and a flash of blue.

"Skittles," she says, questioningly, upon realizing what her partner's pushed at her, and he stares at his feet.

"Couldn't think of anything else," he says, almost inaudibly. "I…figured that it was the least I could do for pissing you off earlier…I shouldn't have made you go up to the prison with me."

"You really think I'd have let you go alone?" Alex asks, pulling the bag of Skittles open and pouring a few into her hand and then into her mouth.

"I know this wasn't an easy case for you."

"I know it wasn't either. Doesn't mean I can't do my job."

She is still holding the picture. Somehow, it has managed to keep from slipping out of her arms and to the floor, and she thinks that if she droops it here and now and the glass shatters, then she might just shatter, too, for a little while.

"Are you all right?"

And there it is. The question that she doesn't want to answer, because she doesn't have an answer. She sighs, and lifts herself up onto the counter, so she doesn't have to tilt her head to look up at him.

"I don't know," she admits. "There's just…too much floating around my head right now, and I just…I don't know."

He nods, slowly, mulling this over, and she can hear him thinking and it makes her want to yell at him to leave, but for some reason, she can't.

"I didn't know, either," he says finally, quietly. "After my mother died, I mean. It just…I knew it was coming, but at the same time I didn't expect it."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't particularly expecting to get pulled off the streets, either," Alex says, sarcastically. "I wasn't expecting to hear that some punk dealer had shot my husband, and I sure as hell wasn't expecting his old partner to get killed, and that whole case to get reopened, but hey. Shit happens, right?"

Her sarcasm is not at all lost on him, and he knows it's her way of dealing with it without really dealing with it, and he knows that both of them have defense mechanisms, and sarcasm is hers.

"It shouldn't have happened to you," he says, because it is all that he can think of to say, and a derisive snort escapes her.

"Yeah, and it shouldn't have happened to Theresa, either, but it did. And it's worse for her, because she has a kid, and I didn't, but you know what? It doesn't make it hurt any less. Whoever said that time heals everything was on crack, because it heals _nothing._"

There is a subtle anger in her voice, but it isn't directed towards him. Rather, it is directed at everyone else, and everything else, because she still doesn't want to deal with it all, and pressure coming in from all sides is not helping. She feels like she's going to explode and wonders what stopped the timer.

"You know, if you want to talk about it…" Bobby starts, but Alex cuts him off.

"I can talk to you, right?" she says, dryly. "Think about that one, Bobby. If this were the other way around, and you'd been the one married to a cop that got murdered, would you want to talk to me about it?"

The comment hurts, if only because he knows it's true; he wouldn't want to talk about it, and doesn't know why he would think that she'd want to talk to him, considering the fact that things have been up and down and upside down and inside out between them for a long time now.

"You don't trust me, do you?" he asks, and she glares at him.

"If I didn't trust you, I wouldn't still be your partner," she tells him, bluntly. "I do trust you. I've always trusted you. I just don't trust myself right now, and it's bothering the hell out of me."

She didn't expect to admit to that, but she knows it's true. She doesn't trust herself. Doesn't know if she really wants to go back out on the streets when her leave is up, doesn't really know if she wants to return to Major Case or if she wants to take a transfer back to Vice or even Narcotics, where she can raise hell in the war on drugs with all the other names and faces that she's been familiar with for so long.

"Are you ever going to tell me what you're holding onto?" Bobby's voice breaks into her thoughts again,, and she shakes her head. It figures he wouldn't just let it go and leave well enough alone. No…he always has to have the answers to something.

"A picture," she tells him, quietly. "I…ah…well, I just felt like carrying it around. What's it to you?"

He ignores the defensive tone and speaks again. "Can I look at it?"

She knows that he already knows what their side of the picture looks like, because it was all over the newspapers after that year's parade, and he had all the articles spread out across that table in the interview room. But she hands the frame over to him anyway.

"If you drop it, I will shoot you," she says, in such a way that tells him she's not past it. He takes it carefully, with both hands, and looks down.

Silence reigns between the both of them for what seems like forever. Alex looks at her partner for a good part of this time, wondering when it got to the point where he knew everything about her and she knew everything about him. The funny thing about this is that they didn't know everything about each other, or rather, he hadn't known everything about her. She had only mentioned Joe once, in passing. And she'd never told him the whole story, but now, he knew, and now, she knew exactly what had happened. The truth, and something she hadn't wanted to face then any more than she'd wanted to face it now.

"You look happy," says Bobby, finally, and she nods, staring down at her feet, which are swinging a good three feet off the ground.

"I was," she says. "A lot more than I thought I ever would be."

This revelation startles him. He has never thought of his partner as someone to let things take her down, because she never has before. But he understands completely why this would. Bobby silently curses the man that they have arrested at this point, because the wrong man has been in prison for a crime he didn't commit, because he has been free for nine years and thinking he'd make up for 'that one cop' by saving other people's lives, because had the nerve to say this in front of Alex when they arrested him. And if they had a chance to go back and do it all over again, he'd have hit the guy.

"The other two…" he starts, and Alex gives a tired sigh, running her hand through her hair to make it move back out of her face.

"Kevin and Theresa Quinn," she replies, and knows somehow that he won't act like he already knew this, even though he probably did. "Kevin played the pipes that year. The rest of us…we followed the department through the parade…did a lot of stuff, actually…"

A faint smile crosses her face at the memory. And suddenly in the back of her mind, it's 1995 again, and they're chasing each other through the crowds, because he said something that annoyed her and if she catches him, he's in for it and he knows it. But he's a lot faster than she is, and she knows it, so after a while, she rolls her eyes and gives it up after nearly running into some captain that she doesn't know and being lectured on causing a panic, though truth was, no one was even paying attention to them. He'd appeared again, after the captain had gone away, and had laughed, and she'd hit him in the arm and told him to shut up.

They'd wandered together after that. It had been one of those perfect days, not too hot and not too cold, somewhere in between, and comfortable. And when they had run into Kevin and Theresa, she'd somehow managed to talk someone into taking a picture of the four of them together, and it ended up in the newspaper's coverage of the parade the next day. She can see her face, poking out from somewhere behind Joe's arm and she's smiling, and so is he, and so are Kevin and Theresa.

None of them knew that just over three years later, there would be a funeral, and dress uniforms, and Kevin playing the pipes there with tears on his face, because it was his partner that the department was about to bury. None of them had known that the department would push the case of Joseph Dutton's murder until there was nothing left to push. None of them knew that for months, Alex would fall asleep in one of his old shirts, never having the heart to give them away or otherwise get rid of them. And none of them had known that nine years later, someone's anger would lead to Kevin's death, point blank, just like that. A bullet to the side of the head and a bullet to the eye.

She has somehow managed to wrap her arms around herself without noticing, and is rocking back and forth on the counter, wishing that Bobby would just stop looking at that picture already, and give it back, because the Alex Eames of 1995 has given way to the one of 2007, and it's been nine years, nine damn years, and she's been holding it together for so long that if she breaks now, she gets the feeling she just might hate herself forever.

"How did you do it?"

Alex nearly falls off the counter at this question. It is not something that she would have ever expected Bobby to ask her. She honestly didn't think he wanted to know. Didn't particularly think that he cared, either. She'd been so angry with him earlier, convinced that all he wanted was to close the case, never mind what it did to the people involved. Never mind what wounds it tore open and poured salt into. Never mind the fact that it was her heart being torn out again and pinned to her sleeve, because it hadn't mattered.

How did I do it, the voice in her mind asks, sarcastically. You want to know how I did it?

There are ways, but she doesn't want to tell him what those ways are, so she just shrugs. "I just did," she says, and says nothing more, though the reasons float around her mind.

She still buys the cologne that Joe used to wear, because on those days when she doesn't think she can take much more, she wears it, to remind herself that she can. His stuff is still all over the office because half of it's really hers, anyways, and somewhere along the line, it got to the point where it belonged to both of them, and neither one of them in particular. She still listens to the same music that he did, and to her own music, just because when she listens to those old ABBA songs, she can hear him laughing at her for singing along.

She looks at their wedding album every year on their anniversary, because it's the one day a year that she insists on having off, and no commanding officer since Joe was murdered until Ross came along ever fought her on it. Not even Bobby fought her on it, because somehow, he had known without her saying that the day meant something to her. She still visits the cemetery where she thought she buried her heart nine years ago, because sometimes, when she's standing in front of the headstone, she can hear conversations between them in the back of her mind, and sometimes, it's the one thing that keeps her going.

"You know…you amaze me sometimes," Bobby says, quietly enough that she has to lean forward to hear him and risks falling off the counter again. "How you've managed to hold it all together all this time…"

"It's not that easy," she says, biting off the words, because she doesn't want his compliments, doesn't want the almost-pity that she thinks she hears in his voice, doesn't want him to feel sorry for her, because damn it, that isn't want she needs.

"I didn't think it was."

"Well, you can't know everything in the world, Goren, and you sure as hell can't know this."

Bobby knows, somehow, exactly what Alex means by this, and understands the sudden hostility, but at the same time, he can't help but wonder if she means that the memories are hers alone, and she's not going to share. Or if she means that this is her burden alone to bear, and damned if she'll let him take any of it off her shoulders.

"I'm not asking to know it," he says. "And I know I can't know everything, but I should think…"

"Yeah, you should," Alex mutters, an unnecessary jab at his unwillingness to let things go, but she doesn't particularly give a damn right now.

"I already told you I was sorry, but if you want to hear it again…"

"Don't start with me. I told you not to apologize and I meant it."

Silence. It seems like there has been a lot of those between them, lately, and she doesn't like it, and gets the feeling that he doesn't, either, but again, she doesn't care. She tucks her knees up against her chest and remains where she is, unbothered by the fact that she probably looks like a child upset about something, but damned if she isn't upset, even if she isn't a child.

"If you want me to leave, I will," says Bobby, but she shakes her head at him.

"I don't want you to go," she says, plainly. There is no room for any misinterpretation in this. And she really doesn't want him to leave, even if she doesn't want to talk, either. He reaches out with both hands to give the picture back to her, and she takes it, and holds it, back in the position it was in when he'd first come.

"If you knew that one day you were going to lose the one thing that meant the world to you, what would you do?" she asks, her voice breaking in the middle of the statement, and he stares at her.

"I would do whatever it took to keep it from happening," he says, finally, uncertain of what she wants him to say, and she nods, more to herself than to him, appearing to mull over his answer before speaking again.

"You know, all this time, I've sat around here thinking that we'd done it, that we'd found the guy that murdered Joe, and then this comes along, and suddenly, I don't know what to think anymore."

"Everyone makes mistakes, Alex. This is hardly your fault."

"That doesn't make it any better." Alex looks away from him, and stares, at the floor, at her feet, at her hands and the fingernail polish that's chipping away again. "He was my everything. He deserved better than to have the lot of us screw up and let his killer walk free because we didn't know who he was."

"Not every case gets closed the way it should be."

"This one should have been." Alex trails off and then swears, under her breath. "Damn this all to hell. None of it should have happened. Kevin shouldn't be dead, and neither should Joe, and Theresa and I shouldn't have to deal with this, but we do, and there's nothing we can do about it!"

Somewhere along the line, her voice has risen to a shout, but she is somehow blinded by her own sadness and something akin to rage to notice.

"If we'd just done our jobs properly, none of this would have happened in the first place. Kevin wouldn't be dead, and neither would that dealer, and we wouldn't have had to reopen anything in the first place, and you, you of all people, pushing this, even after you saw what it was doing…" She trails off and knows that she's getting pissed off at him again without meaning to, because that issue is over.

The look of guilt that crosses Bobby's face is a hard one to miss, and she feels guilty for making it reappear. Annoyed with herself, she pours more Skittles into her hand, and eats them, and wants to cry again because suddenly, the memory of a bag of Skittles appearing on her desk after a long night on the streets with the other Vice girls pops up in the back of her mind. But she doesn't. Or at least, she thinks that she doesn't. The first tear comes without her realizing it, and soon it's a flood, and this is the last thing in the world that she wanted, but here she goes again.

She wonders when it became ok for her to break down in front of her partner like this and doesn't want to think about it. The picture falls from her grip as she moves and she panics, briefly, because it is the one thing there for her to hold onto right now, and if it breaks, she knows that she will, too.

Hands come out of nowhere, catching it before it hits the ground.

Alex looks up, and sees that Bobby has somehow managed to catch it, and therefore, whatever it is that still resides inside of her right now. She buries her face in her hands after a second of looking at him, and remains that way for what seems like forever. If this gets back to the squad, they'll never look at her the same way again, and she knows it, and at the same time, she knows that Bobby would never do that to her.

"Look at me," she says, finally, her voice muffled by her hands. "I'm a mess, you must think I look like hell."

It is a weak attempt at making this into something that it is not, and she knows it won't work, and sure enough, it doesn't, because between her fingers, she can see Bobby shaking his head at her.

"I don't," he says. "And you're not. You just…need time."

Alex snorts. "Time," she says, scathingly. "I've had time. I've had nine years. But tell me something, Bobby. How the hell are nine years supposed to put something back where your heart is supposed to be?"

He doesn't know the answer, and tells her as much. "I don't know," he says. "I would think that nine years would not be enough."

"You're damn straight it's not enough," says Alex, angry again, but not at him. "Upside down, inside out, right side out, and back again, and then, on top of that, no definite answers. No reason why, other than that he was a cop. No remorse, whatsoever, from Delgado, at the trial, and now I know why, and it just…I don't know. I just…don't know."

Her uncertainty is new to both of them. She is the one that seems so sure of herself all the time, unending self-confidence because she knows the guys in the squad would drop to their knees if she told them to, because they all know she could kick their asses without breaking a sweat, and would, if they pissed her off. She is the one who keeps him grounded, and now, the roles have been reversed.

"How are you supposed to get ready for something like that?" Alex wonders, out loud, more to herself than to Bobby, who listens anyway. "How do you go from being perfectly content, and happy, and right, and ok with everything that's going on in the world to wishing that everyone would just go away and that you could find a way to end it all without making it look like you'd done it on purpose? How does that work?"

He wants to say something, but before he can, she goes on.

"If you could see into the future and find out that your heart was going to get torn out and handed back to you on a silver platter, would you want to know? And if you would, then why? Why would anyone want that? And what the hell gives anyone the right to take a gun to someone, without even thinking about the consequences?"

Her voice breaks, but she goes on. "He was going for his shield," she says, a note of something close to desperation in her voice that Bobby doesn't miss. "His damn shield. And some kid got trigger happy and just…shot him."

She closes her eyes and finds herself back in that hospital room, sitting there, just staring, willing him to wake up and say something, anything to her, to tell her that he was just kidding, and it wasn't as bad as she thought it was, and didn't the doctors bother to tell her? She finds herself sitting there, holding his hand, cold fingers laced through her own warm ones, desperation in the gesture that she felt, but no one could see.

"One day," she says. "That's how long it took. One day. And I had the chance to say goodbye, but I just…I couldn't, and then he was just…gone, and…."

She trails off finally, as another flood comes. Once upon a time, she'd thought that she had cried out all the tears, that she'd managed to get a hold of herself enough that she could return to work. But now she isn't sure, and it scares her, because she doesn't want to let that go.

Boundaries have been crossed before, but not like this. He's told her to back off, she's told him to screw off, all when no one's listening, because everyone's so convinced that Goren and Eames are the golden pair of the NYPD, and once upon a time, there had been another name besides hers, but it's the two of them now. And she thinks back on a day in 1998, before all of everything that started this in the first place came to be, and sees all three of them together, with the other members of the squad, with Kevin, and all the other guys, and rest of the Vice girls that ran with her.

If she could have known that within months of that moment, she would lose her heart, she would have tried to do something.

If she could have known that the quiet, almost awkward detective from the Narcotics squad that no one really talked to would become her partner and best friend, she would have laughed.

But it is Bobby's arms around her now, holding her, because that's just what partners do: they have each other's backs, and no one can say anything about it, because that's just the way it is. And she turns, so that she fits, despite the fact that she's still on the counter and buries her face against his chest, so that the sound of her crying is muffled by the fabric of his shirt.

After a while, she pulls back and stares at him for a long moment. "Stay with me?" she asks, because she doesn't want to be alone anymore, doesn't want to deal with this on her own, and if she can pour what's left of her heart out to anyone, it'll be him.

He nods. "You know I will."

And she does, too, and for some reason, everything inside her falls to pieces and she moves back to where she had been before, her face buried against his chest, her voice muffled as she speaks.

"I still feel like something's missing," she says, sniffling, because some things can't last forever, and the spell of having no tears is one of those things. "Like nothing's right and everything's out of place, and I want to fix it, but I can't bring anyone back from the dead."

"Would you if you could?"

Stupid question, Bobby thinks, as the last word escapes him, because he can feel Alex nodding against him, and knows that he should have known the answer all along.

"I would," she says, and there is a note of misery there that he doesn't miss. "I still miss him."

There is no need for her to name who she has been speaking of, because he already knows.

"You probably think it's stupid," she says, but he shakes his head.

"No. I don't."

"It feels that way. I'd give anything I had if I could just have one more day, one more chance to tell him that I loved him, and it's the one thing in the world I'll never have."

The way she sounds comes dangerously close to breaking him, too.

"I'm sure he knows how much you love him, Alex," he says, and she looks up at him, amused in a twisted sort of way.

"You know, that night…I wasn't supposed to have been out on the streets, but one of the other girls called in sick, and I knew he was going out, and I figured, hey, might as well, y'know?"

He nods, even though he has no idea what she's getting at.

"So we talked," she says, as if she's telling one of those cop stories that makes other cops shake their heads and commanding officers wonder exactly what the hell their squads are on. "And we figured we'd both be finished around the same time, so he'd come find me when he was done, and one of the other girls that was there would take up where I left off."

She has never told the whole story of what happened to anyone, from her point of view. All Bobby knows is the department side of it. The cold hard facts that they've just disproved and redone, because everything they had was wrong. He doesn't know her side, but now he's about it.

"I waited out there," Alex says, still looking at him, still braced between him and the cabinets behind her, because he's still holding onto her, and she knows that even if they're nothing more than partners, he will never let her fall. "For hours. And I was starting to think that maybe he forgot, and then I hear Kaye Spurlock in my ear, and she's telling me, hey, something happened. Narcotics is looking for me, and I'm half convinced that she's just giving me crap, because she was irritated about something, but then…"

She trails off, and looks down. "I come back in and next thing I know, I'm talking to Kevin and the other guys, and then I'm just sitting there, watching, and I'd never seen him helpless like that before…."

He isn't used to this side of her. Isn't used to seeing her vulnerable, without any kind of shield with which to protect herself. Isn't used to seeing her moments away from breaking down, and isn't used to being the one to have to catch her before she falls. The picture frame is in between them, because she refuses to let it go, and he'll be damned before he asks her to.

But she has had a hard time dealing with this case, and he can understand somewhat the mix of emotions that he's assuming she must be feeling. Sadness, misery, anger, to the point of rage. Disappointment in a squad that was supposed to be keeping an eye on each other. Hatred, even, towards the city and the man who really did kill her husband and the kid who opened this up in the first place.

The gaping wounds are always the ones that the salt goes into first. They are always the ones that sting, and he has had more than his fair share of them, and now she has one, one that he has never seen, and now he's seeing it, and he doesn't know what to do, and from the looks of it, neither does she.

Sniffling breaks into his thoughts, and then her voice. "Why is it that the things that mean the world to you are always the first to go?"

"I don't know," he says, the answer coming automatically, because he really doesn't know. "I really don't."

Alex nods, and slides off the counter, her feet hitting the ground and a cold shock going through her because the tile is freezing and she isn't wearing socks. She wanders into the living room, and Bobby follows her, and they sit there, in silence, because there is nothing more that either of them can say.

He knows everything, and there are no more secrets between them. She has opened up the most vulnerable part of her with a case, and the lines between work and personal life have been blurred.

"There's no getting over it, is there?" she asks, quietly, plainly, in such a way that tells him that a straight answer is all she's looking for, and if he can't give her one, then he'd better not say anything at all, but he says something anyway.

"I don't think one ever really gets over losing the one they love," Bobby says, and Alex nods again.

"I think you're right," she says, and then, "I wish it didn't have to be this way."

So does he. But this isn't about him.

"I don't think I could do it again," she says, staring directly at him. "I don't think I could lose someone else that I care about and still have enough of me left to stick around the department."

It is a warning, and it is not. It is a desperate attempt to get him to listen to her, and to stop taking some of the risk he does, and if he doesn't see through it, then he's a lot more stubborn about things than she's always thought he was.

He nods, though. "You won't lose me."

Somehow, this promise is enough.

"Stay with me?" she says, again, and he nods.

"You know I will."


End file.
